Waste Diversion Rate

Why is this important?

Changing how we treat our resources and dispose of our garbage is part of living in an environmentally–friendly community.

Ontario's Strategy for a Waste–Free Ontario: Building the Circular Economy will help communities find new ways to make sure that valuable materials that can be reused or recycled are diverted from landfills.

The Region of Peel has set clear long–term waste diversion targets for our community: 75% diversion by 2034.

How is this measured?

The Waste Management Division of the Public Works Department compiles annual waste tonnage data.

The Region of Peel carefully separates and tracks how much waste is collected through recycling, organics, yard waste, and hazardous household waste programs, as well as waste that goes to landfill.

What progress are we making?

Experienced a 0.5 point decrease from 2016 but maintained an improved Waste Diversion Rate of 4.8 points over 2015 rates, resulting in a Waste Diversion Rate of 49.5% in 2017.

This change in diversion can be attributed to a number of things (that caused diversion to go up or down), but a significant factor was a decrease in the amount of leaf and yard waste that was collected in 2017 vs. 2016.

Most of 2017 was spent developing a long-term waste management strategy, including the actions that we will be taking to increase our diversion rate. We are now beginning to implement those actions.

To reach our long–term waste diversion target of 75% by 2034, the Region of Peel is working closely with the Province of Ontario to continue to enhance our waste management program.